I used to have aspirations to be an astrophysicist until I took the physics equivalant of this at Cornell. I did OK in the course but there were some students who were frighteningly brilliant. I just wasn’t in their league. It forced me to rethink my career goal.
Math knowledge has a halflife of like 4 months. I got out of the airforce and wanted to continue with Junior level math classes (300+?), and couldn’t do it. (That and the pro-fessor was using radically different syntax)
Today I couldn’t simplify a polynomial equation to save my life.
My favorite math was geometry in high school. I was behind in high school, between 10th and 11th grade, so I bought myself a summer geometry class. Its amazing how much you can learn without being burdened with 8 other different subjects all at once.
School is structured all wrong. You can’t force a kid to be interested in a subject, you can’t learn a subject unless you are interested in it.